Was it fate that kept Unbridled’s Song in the United States after Japanese buyer Hiroshi Fujita detected an ankle chip in the colt shortly after bidding $1.4 million to purchase him at the 1995 Barretts March sale of 2-year-olds in training?

Only months earlier, Ernie Paragallo, working with the late Buzz Chace, bought the colt from the first crop of Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Unbridled for $200,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s Saratoga Sale.

This would have been a pinhooking home run, but Paragallo and Chace decided to take the horse back, with Paragallo fearlessly predicting victory later that year in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.